Total pages in book: 121
Estimated words: 113130 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 566(@200wpm)___ 453(@250wpm)___ 377(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 113130 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 566(@200wpm)___ 453(@250wpm)___ 377(@300wpm)
I wait a couple of minutes before I go back out there, finding my father sitting on the couch with my mother in the kitchen. “Make yourselves at home.”
“She’s funny,” my father says. “We ordered pizza.” He turns on Sports Center. “How come you don’t have the hockey network?”
“Because I don’t watch hockey,” I tell him.
“Big game tonight,” he mumbles, taking out his phone and then putting it to his ear. “Yeah, how do I sign into my account at your sister’s house so I can watch the hockey network?” he asks. “What do you mean I can’t? It’s my account,” he grunts. “Stone is playing Jaxon tonight.” He then looks at me. “You have some cable or something? I can log in online and mirror it.”
“All this for a hockey game,” I mutter, trying not to let them see that just the mention of Jaxon perks me up and I’m pretty sure my cheeks get pink.
Heading to my office, I grab my laptop and bring it to the living room. “Here.” I hand it to him.
“Do you have a HDMI cord?”
“Cable?” I ask him and he glares.
“Whatever it’s called,” he retorts and I point to the television. He gets on FaceTime, and thirty minutes later, while I’m sitting at the island listening to my mother talk about the holidays this year as I sip my ginger ale, my father finally gets the television to work.
“Yes,” he hisses, “it’s working.”
“Look.” He points to the television screen and we see a team bus pull into the arena. The door opens and then I swear my breath gets caught when I see him walking off the bus, wearing a blue suit, white shirt, and no tie. In his hand is a white cup of coffee, I think. He looks at the camera for a second and then looks away. “There’s Jaxon,” my father announces.
“Thanks for letting me know.” I smile big at him while he side-eyes me. “You act like I don’t know him. I know it’s Jaxon.”
“So much drama with him lately,” my mother mentions and I whip my head to look at her.
“What do you mean?” I try not to act like I’m panicking, but I’m secretly panicking. Did he tell someone about us? Did he tell someone I’m pregnant? Did it get back to them? I look at her and then my father, thinking they definitely don’t know or else this would be a war zone.
“Well, apparently”—my mother leans her hip on my counter—“his girlfriend called Evelyn and said she caught him in bed with someone else.”
“Ex-girlfriend.” My father comes to his defense.
“She called Evelyn, and said what?” The back of my neck turns to fire. The sound of my heart beating echoes in my ears, and I have to wonder if I’m having a stroke right now. The left side of my body goes numb. Even though Jaxon told me, hearing it from my mother is another thing. I also try to get as much information that she has to make sure that our secret is still safe.
“Just that he wronged her and strung her along while he was fucking this other woman.”
“Didn’t string her along if he broke up with her,” my father interjects. “From what Manning says, Jaxon said they were over for a while.”
“Well, she sounds deranged,” I pipe in. “Who barges in someone’s house?”
“How do you know she barged into the house?” My father looks over at me.
“Um.” I look at him for I think a full minute. “You just said he was caught with this other girl. I don’t think he got up in the middle of ‘banging her’”—I use my fingers to do the quotations—“and answered the door for her. Also, can we stop talking about him banging whoever he was banging? That’s private and none of our business.”
“True,” my mother agrees, and I hang my head. “Needless to say, he’s not with that girl anymore.”
“Well, maybe they weren’t good together anyway.”
“Maybe,” my father says and I look back over at the screen and see Stone now on the TV, talking to Jaxon, the two of them laughing about something,
“Stone Richards greeting his longtime family friend, Jaxon Stevenson.” My eyes go to Jaxon and only Jaxon. “It’s all fun and games until the puck drops.”
I take my phone out and pull up his name, thankful I changed it to Himeros.
Me: You looked really hot in your suit. I want my coupon back to redeem it at a later date.
I close the app, knowing he’s not going to be able to answer me now since he’s literally on television, and the pizza gets here.
I’m eating a slice of pizza while my parents talk about the weather changing. “I’ve been thinking,” I start the conversation and they both look at me, “maybe it’s time to get out of New York.”